This application is a Divisional of co-pending application Ser. No. 10/642,157, filed on Aug. 18, 2003 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,097,288, and for which priority is claimed under 35 U.S.C. § 120, and which parent application claimed priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(a) on Patent Application No. 02078439.3 filed in Europe on Aug. 16, 2002, each application being incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink supply system for an ink jet printer.
2. Related Art
Many commercial ink jet printers comprise an ink cartridge which is directly associated with a nozzle head of the printer and is mounted on a carriage for scanning a recording medium to be printed. Since the cartridge is travelling back and forth along with the carriage and the nozzle head, it can only accommodate a limited volume of liquid ink. When the ink cartridge is depleted, it has to be replaced manually. It would therefore be desirable to be able to store a larger volume of ink, especially for printing images with a large format or high volume printers.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide an ink supply system in which a large-volume ink tank can be connected to the ink cartridge for replacing the ink that has been consumed.